The Winds of War

Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul Bäumer is just 19 years old when he and his classmates enlist. They are Germany’s Iron Youth who enter the war with high ideals and leave it disillusioned or dead. As Paul struggles with the realities of the man he has become, and the world to which he must return, he is led like a ghost of his former self into the war’s final hours. All Quiet is one of the greatest war novels of all time, an eloquent expression of the futility, hopelessness and irreparable losses of war.

Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

This is the dramatic story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, this is a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden. Fighting at twenty-five thousand feet in thin, freezing air no warriors had encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

The Things They Carried

Hailed by The New York Times as "a marvel of storytelling", The Things They Carried’s portrayal of the boots-on-the-ground experience of soldiers in the Vietnam War is a landmark in war writing. Now, three-time Emmy Award winner-Bryan Cranston, star of the hit TV series Breaking Bad, delivers an electrifying performance that walks the book’s hallucinatory line between reality and fiction and highlights the emotional power of the spoken word.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family

Why we think it’s a great listen: A masterpiece like none other, Brooks’ powerful performance of Haley’s words has been known to leave listeners in tears. It begins with a birth in an African village in 1750, and ends two centuries later at a funeral in Arkansas. And in that time span, an unforgettable cast of men, women, and children come to life, many of them based on the people from Alex Haley's own family tree.

NOS4A2: A Novel

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.

One Second After

Already cited on the floor of Congress and discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a book all Americans should read, One Second After is the story of a war scenario that could become all too terrifyingly real. Based upon a real weapon - the Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) - which may already be in the hands of our enemies, it is a truly realistic look at the awesome power of a weapon that can destroy the entire United States.

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.

Inside Delta Force: The Story of America’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit

Delta Force—the US Army’s most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won’t hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action to reveal the never-before-told story of First Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force).

The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge

The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company's finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge.

Lincoln

In the best-selling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography - a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

This is the book the CIA does not want you to read. For the last 60 years, the CIA has maintained a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, never disclosing its blunders to the American public. It spun its own truth to the nation while reality lay buried in classified archives. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Tim Weiner offers a stunning indictment of the CIA, a deeply flawed organization that has never deserved America's confidence.

14

There are some odd things about Nate’s new apartment. Of course, he has other things on his mind. He hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So while his new home isn’t perfect, it’s livable. The rent is low, the property managers are friendly, and the odd little mysteries don’t nag at him too much. At least, not until he meets Mandy, his neighbor across the hall, and notices something unusual about her apartment. And Xela’s apartment. And Tim’s. And Veek’s.

Alas, Babylon

This true modern masterpiece is built around the two fateful words that make up the title and herald the end - “Alas, Babylon.” When a nuclear holocaust ravages the United States, a thousand years of civilization are stripped away overnight, and tens of millions of people are killed instantly. But for one small town in Florida, miraculously spared, the struggle is just beginning, as men and women of all backgrounds join together to confront the darkness....

Tobruk

In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcements and supplies within eight weeks. Eight months later these heroic, gallant, determined "Rats of Tobruk" were rescued by the British Navy having held the fort against the might of Rommel's never-before-defeated Afrika Corps.

John Quincy Adams

He fought for Washington, served with Lincoln, witnessed Bunker Hill, and sounded the clarion against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of La Amistad. He served his nation as minister to six countries, secretary of state, senator, congressman, and president. John Quincy Adams was all of these things and more. In this masterful biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals Adams as a towering figure in the nation’s formative years.

Neverwhere

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancée. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever. Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of: a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels. It is a world that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations.

The Power of the Dog

This explosive novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you've never seen it.

The Quiet Game

When former prosecutor Penn Cage returns to his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, he doesn't find the peace he desperately craves. He finds that his own father is being blackmailed by a corrupt ex-cop. And when Penn investigates, he uncovers a murderous secret - and the small town's violent past.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

In August of 1914, the British ship Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. In October, 1915, still half a continent away from its intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in the ice. For five months, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men, drifting on ice packs, were castaways in one of the most savage regions of the world.

Publisher's Summary

In the monsoon season of 1968-69 at a fire support base called Matterhorn, located in the remote mountains of Vietnam, a young and ambitious Marine lieutenant wants to command a company to further his civilian political ambitions. Two people stand in his way. The first is a well-loved combat-weary lieutenant his own age who desperately wants out of the bush but who does not want to leave his Marines with an inexperienced and overly ambitious officer. The second is an angry leader of the company’s radical blacks, who has all the political skill, savvy, and ambition of the protagonist.

As the young lieutenant experiences the costs of combat, he sees the terrible results of his actions and begins to question the value of ambition and skill over compassion and heart.

One of the best books I've ever downloaded at 'audible.com'
I listened to this novel continuously, stopping only to sleep.
Basically I ignored the world and lost myself in the story of a company of US Marines, pushed to their mental and physical limits in the jungles of Vietnam.
It's not easy listening. It's not a novel for those who are offended by foul language and graphic depictions of men lost in the madness of war.
It's excruciatingly tense. The suspense is sharp and will have you fidgeting and the actual combat scenes will put you in the fight and have your stomach in knots
Matterhorn is harrowing. The whole book is filled with the despair, futility and stupidity that war brings. . . but on the flip side it's full of heroism, brotherhood and sacrifice.

I felt rage, sadness, elation and despair whilst listening to this book. That makes it great
I loved it.

I was a child when this book took place and knew nothing about Vietnam. This book taught me a lot of things that all Americans need to understand about Vietnam and the kids who fought there. As a parent now I realize what a sacrifice it is for people who send their children to war - even wars that seem to have an honorable purpose. War, even the "good" ones will always devolve into madness and futility. This is a must read for anyone interested in Vietnam. The narration was one of the best I have heard - multiple characters in recognizable voices.

This is one of the best audio books I've listened to in a long time. The writing is masterful, at times poetic, always insightful and full of character development. The author is able to take the listener to the front lines of a brutal war, and fly above the fray with musings on the nature of life. The reader, Bronson Pinchot, is extraordinarily skillful, flawlessly capturing a large cast of characters with distinct dialects.

I'd suggest downloading the free sample Kindle version of this book and just bookmarking the first page that lists key characters in the book and their respective hierarchy--it just makes it easier to get into the first couple of hours.
This is a tour de force, and a remarkable first novel.

I am going to have to change the answer to all my favorite book password questions to "Matterhorn." Its well-drawn characters, compelling subject and powerful storyline are a stunning achievement from a new author. Its definitely worth a credit, maybe even two and the 21 hours of listening. Even before it was over, I went looking for another by the same author. The narrator may be the best I have ever heard and I have listened to well over 100 audibooks.
Listen to this book!

This book is unique in that it lists all the awful day-to-day suffering of a Marine besides fighting the enemy that NO ONE ever put into the movies! It reads like a journal. It is engrossing.

This author lets you feel the suffering and you listen in awe of the heroic feats (like marching in full gear without any food for days) and proud of the soldiers who managed to just live, much less fight, under the worst possible conditions.

Unglamorous but no less worthy of mention are all the things you didn't realize were such scourge such as: a constant struggle against leeches, wearing filthy clothes for weeks, foot rot & ringworm that often bordered often on gangrenous limbs, racial bigotry within units (destroyed is the myth that Vietnam era soldiers all got along fine and were past any bigotry due to the "peace & love" movement), "career officer" making bad decisions just to impress their superiors, battle body counts that were fudged just to look good to whoever needed those numbers.

Also noted is how the new and constant use of RADIO from the central command post to field soldiers led to a *terrible disconnect* freeing those issuing absurd orders from feeling the devastating effects on the men who executed those orders.

This book nicely avoids many of true but horrid cliches that we've ALL heard by now such as; "We had to burn the the village to save it."

Obviously this is not the "feel-good" book of the year.

However I am very glad I read this book. I have even greater understanding and respect for the men who, despite nearly constant suffering, (BESIDES the awful direct combat) the soldiers withstood while fighting in Vietnam.

I want to write something meaningful. I suppose all I can say is that it transports the listener from their comfortable SUV or livingroom, halfway around the globe to another world entirely! The story is real, the blood is red, the language is foul, the drugs and alcohol are numbing, the racism is injected into everything, and the futility of this deplorable chapter in our history hangs over the entire account like a dirty blanket. If this is what you want, if you are curious as to why so many who came back from this "conflict" only to discover they can never quite get all the way back, then this book is for you.

I was there as an Army aviator, in country 1966 - 1967, spent some time living with forward outfits but also enjoyed air conditioned villas. I spent every day in support of combat operations in one way or another, day and night - listening to their cries of victory as well as their pain, anguish and calls for fire support, napalm and med-evac. I discovered that I don't need or want to go back to that place again. I have gotten on with my life reasonably undamaged by the experience for which thing I feel blessed. I ache for those I know who have not been so lucky. For me, the experience of opening this Pandora's Box was like sticking my finger in a live light socket to see if it would shock me. It did, and I KNEW it would.

So about the book, it was well crafted and had great, very realistic characters. I "knew" many of them. The author took extra care to be graphic, and it seemed that was his intent from the onset. I cannot fault this effort from a literary standpoint at all, but for me it should have been left alone.

On a happier note, this book re-affirmed my resolve made decades ago, to stop often to "smell the roses" and to give thanks for my small station in life today. I remain proud of my service then, but not so proud of the spineless politicians who failed me, and my brothers in arms at that time.

Retired CFO, Army wife, Mom of five, Grandma of six, two sons who served in combat, love to read books that reflect my values and faith, love mysteries, historical, military stories, and books that don't waste my time . . . if it doesn't have an ending that was worth the wait, I'm not a happy camper.

My husband and I listened to this audio book together on two long car trips. If you are offended by the language that soldiers and marines use, be forewarned, this book is full of it. At the same time, know that's how it really is and was. To think that God didn't walk with these brave men then or now in the heat of the battle, I believe is a wrong assumption. For God is surely with us all in the valley. The soldiers of Vietnam, for the most part were kids, just out of high school, naive, just out of boot camp, ready to be marines and win the war. Then they were dropped into a mess that no one ever could have prepared them for. My husband came into the army at the end of the Vietnam war, and thank God, and over his 22 year career never saw combat. Many of our friends were killed in Vietnam or had brothers who were killed or who came back completely changed after the war. This book is a book that every American needs to read or listen to. The truth about what politicians do when they send our young people to war is absolutely gut wrenching. And it continues to happen over and over, and the United States never seems to learn. I'm a mother of two soldiers who have served in Iraq. One of our boys is in Afghanistan right now. I am as patriotic and American as apple pie. But something has happened in America that is absolutely frightening. We don't know who the enemy is anymore.

Marlantes grips the reader as he combines a solid plot line with exceptional character interaction. He chronicles with skill a young second lieutenant's path to a maturity of sorts as the latter confronts the fecklessness of circumstance in a war guided by disparate layers of politics - interpersonal, institutional, and national. Bravo Company pays a heavy price at the nexus between this reality and an unforgiving jungle terrain inhabited by a motivated enemy. The author gives credence to what a rough tutor terror and deprivation can be in forging human bonds and a modicum of wisdom. The tale is well narrated by Mr. Pinchot, and for this listener, proved utterly absorbing

Riveting, stunning and gripping. Long story stays solid from start to finish. Great narrator, the writing is superb; close, deep beyond belief and intense. Makes Platoon seem like child's play. The social commentary, which builds towards the end, is relevant and focused and in no way seems preachy. No politics here, just the fog of war shrouded in blood. They say it took the author 30 years to complete this story. I can see why. Recommended.

this book was recommended to me by a few people and it never failed to live up to the hype . it is read superbly and you get a feeling for everyone in the book love or hate them it leaves a lasting impression at the end as there mission just seems to get worse. its a powerfull book and although its a story about vietnam you cant help thinking all the way through that kind of stuff happened all the time over there which in itself makes the audiobook even more powerfull i myself now recommend it to everyone reading this .

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Phil R

Bolton, Lancashire

9/4/10

Overall

"AWESOME!!!"

I would recommend this audiobook to anyone who has the slightest interest in Vietnam war stories. It is long but worth every second.
It is graphic, sometimes very graphic however this is one book i look forward to listening to again.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Rowan

Wales

8/30/10

Overall

"A military story but a good one"

It?s a military book for sure. There are lots of military stories out there to buy but this one is a beaut. It?s a pretty long one but didn?t feel it. It?s a fully rounded book was sad to have it end. I highly recommend.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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